]]>In this part of the Personalisation Technology Manifesto, we’ll build on optimisation through testing, to look at engaging our audience through targeting. All the information you need to pinpoint your most valuable segments is there, just waiting to be processed and interpreted, and the insight it contains can make or break a campaign or even a business model. Observing your visitors’ behaviour and characteristics while you are testing will set you up to proactively target them based on these behaviours down the line.

The business rules that we can use for targeting span an immense number of factors – in fact they can be as varied and complex as our customers’ behaviour. But this need not be the case – at their most powerful they connect a user seamlessly with the products or content that they are interested in, without the customer having to think about it. This is the crux of any good personalisation strategy – providing relavant and engaging content to the customer without getting in the way of the experience. At its simplest, we can capture the category of items that a user interacted with in their visit to the site and use that to tailor the content on the homepage of the site when they return. This might sound simple, but not enough brands are doing it today and they’re missing out because of it.

A great example of an organisation getting this right is Royal Bank of Scotland, who treat their site and mobile experience like a branch. In this video, Giles Richardson, Head of Data & Analytics for the bank, talks about his approach to the customer journey, an listening to customer needs – the benefits to the business speak for themselves.

Moving beyond this idea of category affinity, business rules can be used to show appropriate content based on the campaign creative that drove the visitor to the site – think of this as creative consistency. They can also be used in more advanced ways to “score” visitor interactions and use a combination of these scores and the high value areas of the site to promote the appropriate message to drive visitors to the next stage in the customer journey or lifecycle. Imagine an automotive manufacturer that ultimately wants to push test drive appointments to its dealer network — engagement starts with a prospect looking at the technical details of a car, moves to the user configuring their own car or creating a personalised brochure and ends with them filling out a form and arranging a test drive. Business rules can be used at each stage of this journey to assess the current status of the prospect and deliver messaging and creative to guide them to the next stage – a car configurator banner on the homepage, a list of local dealers based on the prospect’s current location. And this idea of using location for targeting brings us to another important aspect of a targeting strategy, geo-targeting. When we put geo-targeting in the mix, we consider the physical dimensions of our businesses and marketing campaigns. What’s the purpose of showing a customer in Newcastle items in a sale in London? Mistakes like this cost us twice: first in their guaranteed ineffectiveness, second in the missed opportunity to capitalise on a potential touchpoint.

So the benefits of targeting to the business and our customers are great but with so many variables to test and employ, so many different ways to connect with certain segments and populations, how do we ensure that our technical and logistical operations keep up with our marketing ideas? A few rules follow, both for thinking about targeting and in terms of how your targeting technology should support you:

Build on learning and reuse your audiences: All the work put into one campaign must be leveraged in the future. After all, success means drawing a line around a valuable segment and meaningfully reaching them with a campaign. That segment will still be useful tomorrow, and this means that we can apply our new knowledge to a wide variety of marketing opportunities in the future. Adobe Target makes the retention and sharing of this data effortless. Its place in Adobe’s suite of marketing tools means there’s never any question as to whether your new data will translate to another

Combine insights: Adobe’s core services offer profile and audience configuration, meaning that all of your calculations can take into account both first-party, Adobe, and third-party data. This is absolutely critical. With this service you have a channel for combining authenticated and anonymous data into one congruent whole. This offers an impressively clear lens through which to view your segments and your individual customers, elegantly uniting types of data that previously have been enormously challenging to unite.

Keep on top of your rules: As you start to assemble business rules to push content to your users in a given set of circumstances or scenarios, you need a targeting platform that will enable you to create those scenarios and then to validate them for each of your personas or even down to the individual user level. Fidelity of experience is all important and conflicting business rules that cause clashing unrelated products to be shown or duplication of content on the same page are harmful to the experience. The Adobe Tar­get Visual Expe­ri­ence Com­poser enables your team to cre­ate, deploy and main­tain opti­mi­sa­tion activ­i­ties with ease, as well as showing you, at a glance, a sum­mary of all of your activ­i­ties in a dash­board and pro­vide alerts about poten­tial activ­ity conflicts.

Keep implementation easy: With Adobe Target, you’re able to inject your sites with complex, rules-based targeting immediately. What’s more, in addition to the necessary framework working out of the box, you have access to the industry’s broadest list of targeting rules: complex filters made as easy as the press of a button.

]]>Today, the DMP (Data Management Platform) is everywhere, from the projects of marketing boards to the columns of the specialist press, including the service offerings of agencies. In a world where data is gold, the DMP presents a critical challenge, combining technology, marketing, media and organization, and is now far beyond the buzz stage. More and more companies, however, are wondering about the DMP: why embark on such a project? What about its ROI? What are the business challenges justifying its implementation? And how to make the most of it? Find answers, challenges and recommendations about DMP in this article.

What is a DMP?

Real conductor of your data, the purpose of a DMP is to unify and centralize all available data about an individual, whether they are owned data (navigation, mobile, social networking, offline, CRM) or third party data. More concretely, a DMP is a software platform allowing companies to collect and centralize customers and leads data, and to reprocess them (by unifying them, enriching them, segmenting them, and steering them), in order to activate them on the different channels with which the DMP is connected. The challenge is then to obtain the most complete view possible of my audience, in order to be able to cut it into segments, and communicate effectively with them.

The challenges of a DMP

The challenges of a DMP are multiple, but we can identify two main ones:

1) Optimize media purchases: At present, the majority of advertisers deciding to invest in a DMP do so to optimize their media spend: 87% cited specifically their willingness to improve ad targeting, while 83 % quoted a need to adapt the purchase of media audience (Source: Winterberry study for IAB). Currently, it is extremely difficult to determine what the yield of media purchases is: a DMP provides visibility into the profitability and performance of media exposures.

2) Optimize purchase tunnel: The second issue of a DMP is related to optimization opportunities in the conversion rate on the website and mobile, as well as the purchase tunnel: the collected and aggregated data allows for a detailed and comprehensive picture of its audience, and thus to customize as much as possible the experience in the digital ecosystem.

Succeed at a DMP project

Nevertheless, the complexity of a DMP requires you to follow certain recommendations to ensure the success of its implementation:

1) Start with a simple scenario: It is essential to avoid going too fast, too fast, and to wish to use all data sources from the start. Instead, we must accept to start using simple scenarios and enrich, refine, and ramp up gradually.

Let’s take the example of one of our customers, a European telephone & television operator. Their first use case was to distinguish its customers from its leads, by “on-boarding” in the DMP its CRM data. Once this distinction made, each segment was offered different purchasing tunnel but also specific advertisements (display and search): the implementation of this basic scenario led to a decrease of 18% in CPA (Cost per Acquisition) and a 45% augmentation of the Display CTR (Click Through Rate). When we are spending millions of euros in media purchasing, it makes a huge difference in terms of business impact!

2) Integrate CRM data with audience profiles: Secondly, it is also essential not to limit ourselves to the data obtained from online customers, but rather to strive to integrate CRM data into the audience profile. This allows to adapt the purchase tunnels thanks to the existing data, in order to get an even clearer and even stronger vision.

If I take the example given above, the customer in question was able to identify the most effective and appropriate offers for its customers, but also for the leads he had touched, thus managing to refine his message and performance.

Again, before using third-party data, using data from the company made the difference: in less than 6 months, the client was “even” and all revenues generated were then profit!

What about you, what is your experience in DMP? Feel free to continue the discussion and share your views on the subject in the comments !

]]>http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/web-analytics/data-management-platform-issues-recommendations/feed/0SEM for Travel Brandshttp://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/search-engine-marketing/travel-brands-sem/
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/search-engine-marketing/travel-brands-sem/#commentsTue, 21 Jul 2015 15:21:54 +0000http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/?p=11840Hello, Travel Peak! It’s one of the two most wonderful times of the year when those of us in the [...]

]]>Hello, Travel Peak! It’s one of the two most wonderful times of the year when those of us in the travel industry are up to our eyeballs in campaign roll-outs, budget management, ROI maximisation, and probably wishing we were on holiday, ourselves.

For years, Adobe Media Optimizer has been empowering some of the biggest travel brands to dramatically improve their Search Engine Marketing. In the UK, First Choice – part of the TUI group – was able to realise a complete account restructure in the seven weeks running up to peak season, which enabled them to achieve significant uplift quickly. Year on year, they increased their number of passengers (PAX) by 77% with only a 35% increase in spend. On the Continent, GO Voyages reduced the time SEM teams spent on optimisation efforts, increasing productivity by 30%. And Monarch Airlines have been able to shift their SEM efforts to be more strategic and less tactical.

So if you’re struggling to keep your head above the tropical PPC waters or are ready to upgrade to first-class when it comes to what you and your team can deliver to the business, here are a few of the ways Adobe Media Optimizer has helped these, and many other brands, achieve five star results.

Most businesses in the travel vertical are in a constant battle of scale – many accounts across multiple search engines, usually covering a variety of products across a range of countries. If only there was an easy way to apply the changes you need across not only your fleet of Google accounts, but also across your activity in other search engines. And if only there were some way to manage the structure – keywords, copy, and the lot – without creating a massive Bermuda Triangle in your SEM accounts.

But wait – there is.

In Adobe Media Optimizer, we know it’s always better to travel together. That’s why we have all your accounts across the search engines you use living in one place. You can drill down through them together. You can export into a bulksheet in Excel together, make changes, and upload again to schedule or post immediately together. You can even combine Google, Yahoo, and Bing in the same portfolios to get algorithmic bidding efficiencies, given the very similar structure of those three search engines. This means less time, less stress, more cross-account consistency, and more search engine parity. Which ultimately leads to a better ROI out of your spend and your team.

2. Build, Scale, & Maintain Granular Accounts with Full Coverage at All Times

Once you’ve got everything in one place, the next hurdle is ensuring full coverage is built out and maintained across your accounts. That’s just to make sure business as usual is handled. When we talk about winning in a highly competitive industry, you’ve got to be implementing best practices at scale – granular account structures, core keywords, and ad copy that leverages dynamic components like stock levels and price points. The challenge isn’t knowing this is what needs to be done – these best practices are nothing new in the PPC world. Rather, it’s having the tools to execute it accurately, to scale, and automatically, so your team can spend their time on developing and actioning strategy, rather than banging their heads against their desks wishing they were on holiday.

Leveraging Advanced Campaign Management within AMO, you can achieve just that. Connect your product feeds through an ftp to a customisable template, which can populate your account structure, core keywords, and up to five pieces of ad copy. This includes dynamic components like prices and availability, which can update as the feed does. It will also automatically create new account components when a new line enters the feed. And although the entire process is able to be fully automated, you can also choose to have a bit more control and approve the output before pushing it live. This means you can get as granular as you want in no time – literally.

3. Automatically Pause/Restart Activity Based on Availability

Whether it’s hotel rooms, seats on a plane, or places on a cruise, availability is always in flux. When you’re dealing with significant scale and volume, manually turning activity on and off is just not possible. Especially when you’ve got targets to hit and budgets to manage during peak season.

Adobe Media Optimizer helps you cut the wastage on your ad spend, as well as your team’s hours, giving you multiple options to deal with stock. In the settings for the Advanced Campaign Management templates discussed above, you can specify a numerical threshold to pause activity, as well as react to missing line items in your feed. Activity will go live again when the stock threshold is superseded or when the line item comes back in the feed. And it’s all designed to make sure you’re not advertising what you can’t sell – automatically.

4. Flight Budget by Day of Week to Maximise Value of Consideration Cycle

Aside from businesses targeting last-minute travellers, the consideration cycle is travel tends to show trends over the course of the week. This can make moderating ROI across the week and maximising your pipeline challenging.

That’s why Adobe Media Optimizer gives you the option to flight your portfolio budgets by day of week, instead of setting a standard daily budget. We’ve also released extra functionality in how the cost model is built for each keyword when you’re running with a day of week strategy to give you the control to do a bit of fine-tuning on how the bid optimisation algorithm goes to work for your business and assesses performance to set the next day’s bids. This means greater control over budgets, ROI, and pipeline maximisation.

5. Control How Reactive You Need the Bidding Algorithm to Be to Win On & Off Peak

Automation – no matter how scalable and efficient it may be – also needs to be able to be flexible enough to serve your unique business needs. And let’s face it, travel businesses usually have a much longer consideration phase than classic retail. You know that conversion is likely to come in a few weeks after that click. Conversely, during peak, that time period between research and purchase can be markedly shorter.

As a leader in adtech for the travel industry, Adobe Media Optimizer provides the control to toggle how reactive the bid models need to be in gauging performance and optimising bids. This means you can have a slower level during business as usual periods and a much more reactive model during peak when people are buying faster and you need to react quicker to fluctuations in market demand to maximise returns.

These tools, in conjunction with the other capabilities of Adobe Media Optimizer, put your team in the pilot’s seat to drive real business results that not only hit your peak season targets, but also help you execute strategically and efficiently.

So grab your passport, because you’re about to take your SEM performance to its dream destination! Happy travels!

]]>http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/search-engine-marketing/travel-brands-sem/feed/05 Characteristics of Successful Brand Contenthttp://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/digital-marketing/5-characteristics-of-successful-brand-content/
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/digital-marketing/5-characteristics-of-successful-brand-content/#commentsTue, 21 Jul 2015 14:54:41 +0000http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/?p=11835Today, digital is definitely at the heart of our lives, but also at the heart of brand’s lives. From simple [...]

]]>Today, digital is definitely at the heart of our lives, but also at the heart of brand’s lives. From simple economic actors, they have become real actors of our society, trying more and more to establish a direct relationship with their targets, especially through social networks, and more and more often choosing to no longer focus solely on traditional media such as television or radio.

At the heart of a true digital maelstrom, brands are trying, in order to become visible, to create interest and attract attention. Thus, if the ROI (Return on Investment) remains a major KPI, ROA (Return on Attention) is becoming increasingly important.

What is brand content?

Brand content is a consequence of these developments: it is a creative new genre, combining a brand communication logic with the presentation of a traditional media offer, in order to answer these issues of engagement creation.

More specifically, the brand content is a content directly created by and for a brand, which is both the editor and the producer. This content has a “natural” link with the DNA of the brand and its role is to expand its territory by sharing its values ​​and passions, but also to create a relationship, and lead to support and engagement.

On a more global scale, content marketing is definitely there to stay, and its development isn’t stopping anytime soon: in 2015, 70% of marketers produce more content than the previous year (Content Marketing Institute), and 80% of CEOS are convinced that the content is the future of marketing (Infographics Demand Metric).

5 characteristics of successful brand content

With this in mind, I studied numerous successful brand content campaigns and was able to identify 5 essential content features:

1 / Be interesting, before being interested

The aim is to ensure that the audience comes and remains primarily for the quality of content, and not primarily for the brand. The content should be based on the DNA of the brand, but above all, in relation to a target, and not in relation to a product.

2 / Be entertaining, but not advertising

The second essential characteristic of a successful brand content is its ability to be entertaining and engaging, while remaining within the universe of the brand, without falling into the pitfall of advertising. Brands are not media and therefore aren’t destined to be neutral: we must create characters, tell stories, while remaining consistent with the brand values.

For this, it is necessary to create content that makes you want to share it, that will fit into a social system, and that will ensure Internet users transmit the brand’s message and content.

4 / Be Free

A brand content must be free: there shouldn’t be any access fee to that content because the goal is to generate attention, and paid content automatically has a reduced scope.

5 / Be able to spread in the digital ecosystem

Finally, Brand Content should enable the brand to reach its audience directly where it is located: on video platforms, on media portals, on social platforms, and not necessarily on a brand site.

The presence of these 5 characteristics does not guarantee success, but the absence of one of them seems to guarantee failure: it’s about stacking all the odds in your favor!

Moreover, measuring the performance of a Brand Content campaign is essential, but it requires to clearly identify objectives in advance, which is still far from simple: I will speak about it in more details in my next article. But know that, as usual, if one does not know precisely define what success is, it is difficult to evaluate and measure it…

What about, what are the qualities that you consider critical to the success of a brand content campaign? Feel free to continue the discussion and share your views in the comments section!

]]>http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/digital-marketing/5-characteristics-of-successful-brand-content/feed/0The Quest for Mobile Excellencehttp://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/mobile-marketing/the-quest-for-mobile-excellence-2/
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/mobile-marketing/the-quest-for-mobile-excellence-2/#commentsWed, 15 Jul 2015 08:43:43 +0000http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/?p=11799The smartphone – blessing and bane of our existence, both as individuals and as marketers. It’s become so integral to [...]

]]>The smartphone – blessing and bane of our existence, both as individuals and as marketers. It’s become so integral to our lives, and yet in many ways, we’re still trying to get our heads – or rather – our hands – around it. ‘Doing’ mobile marketing – let alone doing it well – has been on our radar for a few years now, and yet we have still not seen a fundamental shift across brands and industries.

We at Adobe recently did a study with eConsultancy to check in with businesses on where they are in their ‘Quest for Mobile Excellence’. Surveying 3,000 marketers and digital professionals, only 19% of businesses would define themselves as ‘mobile first’, and less than a third of companies said mobile is central to their overall business.

Now, talking about mobile-first is nothing new, and in many ways it’s become an empty conversation. And although the numbers have slowly increased over the past few years, the story is still the same, belying mobile for most businesses is still very much a tactic, not a strategy.

So in aiming to achieve not just mobile excellence, but business excellence now and in the coming years, it is imperative we reframe mobile:

Instead of continually mulling over how mobile can add value to your business, consider mobile is your business.

Instead of dedicating some budget to just tick the box, consider mobile is your gateway to personal connection with your customers.

Instead of debating whether to invest in a mobile-optimised site or an app, consider how you can transform your customer experience.

So let’s take a look at these three key areas with the insights we’ve gained from our Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing helping us highlight successes and gaps in the field.

Let’s Get Personal

‘No tool in our modern history approaches the depth and breadth of the smartphone’s role in everyday life.’

Think about how you use your smartphone – it’s an incredibly personal device. It’s with us just about everywhere we go and stores our personal and professional lives. It’s how we connect with people. It’s how we access information and products to augment our lives.

As marketers, we have unique access to connect directly with our customers through their mobile devices. So think like a consumer – how could a brand add value to your life, instead of just pushing products? This is where consistent, relevant experiences are key, and it’s especially critical when we’re looking at multiple channels and across channels.

We also found in our research 31% of total digital traffic is via mobile. This means the mobile experience – website, app, or both – cannot be created and left static, especially if you’re going to keep it personal. That’s why it’s crucial to test often and test with purpose, just like you’d be sure to be doing with your desktop site. And with less than a third of respondents saying they have budget dedicated to mobile experimentation, there’s a long way to go.

Your Customer Journey Depends on It

Remember – although there are always similarities amongst businesses within verticals and there is a lot of value in best practice sharing, your relationship with your customer is unique. So although 49% of respondents we surveyed have chosen to focus on apps, the key to an investment in mobile that will drive business value is to really understand your customer journey. How do your customers engage with you? Understanding this means you can get over where they are to make that engagement as easy, enjoyable, and effective as possible.

When you do need to make that decision, though – to app or not to app? – cost will be a factor, so invest wisely.

A native app build can be in the range of 2x the cost of a mobile website. Both require ongoing maintenance, testing, and experimentation, plus the additional factor of multiple app stores to maintain, in the case of the application. The good news is there are solutions, such as Adobe Experience Manager Apps + PhoneGap Enterprise, which enable the easy, scalable management of apps from start to finish across multiple app stores to help manage cost and resource.

Success Requires Strategy

Our research results indicated a significant gap in strategy across businesses. Only 34% of respondents said their business has a mobile strategy that extends for a year or more. This confirms we still have a long way to go to cause a paradigm shift in the way we think about and formulate our business strategies.

Two main components of a successful mobile strategy that emerged are responsibility and measurability. For the first, what works is centralising ownership and diversifying responsibility. Ultimately, someone must be accountable. And because mobile touches each part of the business, each part must touch mobile and be clear what their deliverables are. Essentially, everyone’s got to have some skin in the game. In the current landscape, however, the percentage of businesses which have all teams or departments accountable for some mobile-specific KPI is only 13%.

What our research has revealed is the most digitally advanced companies have a mobile centre of excellence – so a core team to own mobile, who can then oversee mobile throughout the business, and to whom other teams must feed back into.

Strategy means understanding and actioning business value in conjunction with business vision, so measurability is key. Your mobile activity is only as good as the revenue/customer retention/uplift it’s driving, just like any other channel or campaign. Admittedly, there are some challenges with the tech side of mobile tracking as it stands; however, we as marketers don’t wait for 100%. We make the most out of what’s available, and there’s already a lot. With Adobe technology, you’re able to track a plethora of mobile-centric metrics alongside hard conversion data.

So what does your business need to measure and why? This will help you determine what you need to be able to measure, and then investigate the best way to implement that tracking. And the effort is worth it – 67% of respondents who invest in cross-channel tracking/visitor stitching say they understand how mobile fits into their customer journey cross-device & cross-channel.

Understanding the current state of mobile in businesses enables us to draw three powerful conclusions to help us cause the paradigm shift customers are already demanding: 1) create personal and consistent experiences, 2) understand and action your customer journey, 3) match business value with business vision. Putting these insights into action, we can start to catch up with our customers and continue to win in business today and in the coming years.

]]>http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/mobile-marketing/the-quest-for-mobile-excellence-2/feed/0Exploring the Impact of Intraday Bidding on Advertising Performancehttp://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/online-advertising/exploring-the-impact-of-intraday-bidding-on-advertising-performance/
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/online-advertising/exploring-the-impact-of-intraday-bidding-on-advertising-performance/#commentsMon, 13 Jul 2015 15:37:18 +0000http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/?p=11783Have You Got the Time? PPC was already very fast-paced with millions of keyword auctions per second, but recently the [...]

PPC was already very fast-paced with millions of keyword auctions per second, but recently the clock has been ticking even louder for search marketers competing against intraday trends. Every hour has opportunity to be squeezed out of it, and this article will explain how you can get into the right position at the right time with a profitable bid.

Dr. Sid Shah is well-known for his presentations on ‘fun with algorithms’. He also performed some compelling analysis for Search Engine Land back in 2009. But in the aftermath of Google’s Enhanced Campaigns and the proliferation of bid modifiers, the subject of hour of day has come up again.

The best SEM teams do not let themselves get distracted by less actionable data. Instead, they focus on the metrics that actually drive bottom-line business value. They execute efficient strategies instead of obsessing over time-consuming chores that can only help a small minority of head terms for a small part of the year.

That is why it’s time to have a fresh, frank conversation about intraday bidding. How much incremental value will hourly updates actually drive beyond daily methods that allow conversion efficiency signals to reach statistical significance? What should modern advertisers do to find balance between frequency and reliability? What combination of approaches will maximise bottom-line results with reasonable time and effort?

Attribution in the Customer Journey

Intraday optimisation is driven by a clear understanding of proper attribution throughout the customer journey across keyword types and channels. The high volume of generic head terms usually results in lower efficiency. When budgets get tight, rookies can be tempted to cut head terms. However, experienced PPC managers remember how essential those head terms are for building awareness pipeline. Short-term gains must not be put ahead of long-term success.

Experienced PPC managers also remember that customers don’t function in channel silos. Marketers must expand their perspectives beyond their individual specialties by maintaining visibility of customer click paths. This helps inform advertising investment decisions based on the value driven each step of the customer journey.

Intraday optimisation is not merely a PPC gimmick. It is the reward of advertisers who have committed to clear understanding of attribution. Attempting to build this understanding of attribution in real-time poses a few distinct challenges.

Uncertainty in Predictions

Let’s look at two examples of what you’re grappling with when attempting to do attribution in real time by manipulating bids multiple times in the same day.

If the majority of your conversions were driven by entire customer journeys that took less than an hour, you might be able to justify changing bids hourly. If there is additional traffic and conversion volume at a profitable efficiency, continue to bid up. If projections show that greater marginal returns are guaranteed elsewhere, bid down. Pretty straightforward. Except for one thing –

Where is the actionable data? The truth is, no data is available this hour that is significantly different from the signals of value available an hour before. Most intraday bidding approaches from other advertising tools rely too heavily on the estimated sample data of enhanced CPC instead of reliable conversion efficiency data unique to each keyword. Without hard data to base your decisions on, how can any reliable forecast be calculated?

Even for low price and low risk offerings, the vast majority of customer journeys span more than an hour. Many advertisers are being pressured with propaganda to ask every advertising tool vendors how frequently bids can be changed. Instead, they should be using their understanding of their customers to identify how frequently bids should be changed. Wise advertisers do not confuse being busy with being productive.

When exactly will a click convert? There is no way to know at the time of the click, so increasing bids in response to real-time traffic volume does not necessarily drive ultimate sales. On the other hand, bidding down due to lower current volume might just be cutting your conversion pipeline short.

Intraday bidding based on live data actually makes a lot of sense for sportsbook gambling, entertainment events, or temporary retail promotions where advertisements are dealing with a one-day opportunity to harness demand before it fades later in the day. These businesses don’t have a choice – they have to use the data that’s available, make allowances for error, and generally do a fair bit of manual bid manipulation throughout the day. But most of us do have a choice. For all the effort and room for error, it’s just not worth the tiny marginal value. Trying to make hourly decisions based on assumptions and estimates will just result in wasting budget faster.

Balanced Route to Success

How do you stay ahead of the competition and improve year over year performance? Before resorting to intraday bidding, here are five fundamental tips you need to get right first:

The first fundamental is a solid account structure – a diversified match type spread that doesn’t focus heavily on broad match terms, strong cross-match negatives, regularly tested ad copy and landing pages, habitual keyword mining and pruning. If you’ve got a labyrinth of an account, putting something more robust in place can take you from 0–10% uplift alone.

The second key is setting the right base bid. This is where having that keyword-level data coming in every day is key, because it enables portfolio-based tradeoffs to be made. This is especially powerful when you’re able to define exactly what blend of conversion metrics equates to value for your business, so you’ve got firm control over what traffic you want to chase. At Adobe, we’ve seen our Media Optimizer clients realise an average of 20% uplift powering their paid advertising accounts with our portfolio-based bid optimisation for over a decade.

Once you’ve got those building blocks in place, that’s the time to ensure you have granular tracking in place to be able to see what’s going on across bid dimensions and decide which ones to leverage. Google’s making this data easier for us Digital Marketers to access with their URL parameter changes. The parameters Google are surfacing mean it is possible to have visibility over the data needed to analyse performance and adjust bidding algorithmically across the wealth of dimensions available to us. Adobe Media Optimizer has opted for the most robust implementation possible in order to do just that. This is setting our customers up to automatically optimise their bid dimensions, just as they’re already doing for mobile devices. You can read more about leveraging valuable bid dimensions in Part 2 of this blog post.

The fourth component is attribution. Ensure you have transparent click-path visibility from the campaign level down through the keyword level so you can thoroughly analyse what role different keywords are playing in the customer journey. Then you can apply the best attribution model for your business. Remember, attribution boils down to assigning the appropriate level of value to each touch point from first to conversion to minimize CPA and maximize ROI and overall pipeline.

The final piece of the puzzle is cross-channel. Once you’ve got Search performing at its pinnacle, you’re ready to look at the bigger picture. Running your biddable advertising campaigns – most often Search, Social, and Display – through the same bidding platform running off the same data set as your wider business means you’ve got full visibility over the customer journey and are able to make data-based and scalable trade-offs. It also means you can clearly understand the value of your advertising efforts in the context of the wider business, set the best attribution model at a larger scale, and effectively demonstrate how your channels are contributing to the bottom line.

At the end of the day, as the sun fades and the clock ticks on your PPC activity, take the time to reflect on your time and its value. It’s easy in the world of complex accounts and multiple dimensions to get sidetracked by the latest lever to pull or promised solution. But don’t get sucked into a wormhole that will waste your time and not deliver solid, reliable value to your business.

]]>The speed at which marketing is changing and thus driving digital transformation in companies is truly immense. Today companies are more and more obliged to tackle digital transformation, if they want to be still successful in the future. Something we have known from working day-today with our customers, and now confirmed in the Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015: German marketers are right on track. Throughout Europe they have already laid best the foundations for a digital future.

Check out below the complete Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015 and let us continue to remain in tight exchange about digital transformation.

Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015

Germany

German marketers see the industry changing rapidly; they’re optimistic and see it as an opportunity

Though Marketers feel confident in their skills and abilities (67%), they are less excited about the changes than their European counterparts (DE 34%, FR 52%, UK 46%)

Adapting to new technologies (73%) , organizational change (59%) , and delivering more compelling content (80%) are important to staying relevant as the industry evolves

Though technological advancements are seen as necessary, German Marketers prioritize privacy

New technologies are seen as impacting how audiences are reached and how marketing effectiveness is analyzed (63%) . However, Marketing is still seen as interruptive (34% [welcome],) and marketers are not embracing hyper personalization – (52% [embrace])

Marketers agree it is critical for marketers to be skilled in mobile (69%) . Despite their popularity, the need to deliver across wearables (45%) is not as important

German marketers are mixed about how they use data — while some primarily rely on data when making strategy (37%) , others primarily rely on intuition (42%) . Still, big data and marketing measurement are seen as critical marketing functions 3 years from now (46%)

As IoT enables marketing to permeate consumers’ lives, marketers are looking to adapt to new technology to stay relevant for consumers

Delivering a consistent customer experience on mobile and wearables will be more important in the future for German marketers (92% apps, 91% websites, 83% social media and 71% wearables)

German marketers are ready to implement new technologies to stay ahead (UK 58%, FR 68%, DE 67%)

As the marketing function increases in influence and new technology drives changes, German marketers see a shift in priorities

]]>It’s never been a more exciting time to be a marketer – in fact in our 2015 Digital Roadblock report, 68% of UK marketers agreed that we are entering a ‘golden age’ of marketing. And it appears that our profession is indeed flourishing, we have more choice than ever before when it comes to methods of reaching and engaging with our customers. Half of you said that you had heard about a new marketing channel or term within just the past month and 3 in 5 said that new technologies are the driving forces behind this change.

This brings us to the paradox of choice, while opportunity abounds, how do we make sure we are answering the business’ needs now, as well as preparing for a future where virtually everything will be a channel to reach audiences on? Plus, consumer expectations are higher than ever before – they want to engage on their own terms, no matter the time, the channel, the device and the content has to be good. You’ll see from the results that marketers are being heavily challenged with this, and while the majority are excited about the opportunities, they are also concerned about how well prepared both they themselves and their companies are for this new digital age.

But, perhaps one of the biggest surprises for me in this survey was that marketers rated eCommerce as their most critical focus area in the next 12 months –above cross-channel marketing, content management, personalisation and all the other elements you would have expected. To me this says that marketing’s influence really is spreading across businesses, and perhaps the traditional sales, IT, marketing, finance barriers are finally coming down. If this is true, then we really are entering a golden age for marketing.

Here’s a summary of the key findings:

UK marketers see the industry changing dramatically and the change is only accelerating; they’re optimistic and see it as an opportunity

Eighty-five percent of marketers see the changes in marketing as an opportunity (UK 85%) ; nearly half (47%) feel optimistic and are excited (46%) about the changes.

While optimistic, UK marketers worry about their ability to keep up (48%, 37% EMEA); they feel underprepared for the changes within their industry (41%) and feel they are along for the ride rather than driving change (51%).

Marketers believe they are expected to adapt to tech advancements to keep pace with the industry (73%) , yet only 19% describe themselves as tech savvy (early adopter)

New technologies are transforming how marketers interact with their audiences and how marketing effectiveness is measured

3 in 5 marketers believe new technologies are the driving forces of change (UK 61%, FR 50%; DE 63%)

Marketers believe that internet-connected devices enable marketing to permeate every aspect of consumer life (70%). Marketers must become skilled in mobile5 (63%) and in delivering consistent customer experience across mobile and IoT devices to reach these consumers

New technology is contributing to the change in consumer expectations – consumers now expect immediate responses (79%), compelling content (74%), uniquely tailored marketing (62%) and brands to communicate directly to them (73%).

58% agree capturing and applying data to inform and drive marketing activities is the new reality.

British marketers recognise that a fundamental change to marketing is needed (59%, FR 54%, DE 42%), but technological changes haven’t enticed them to abandon traditional marketing approaches

Holding onto old methods continues to be the trend as British marketers are less likely to implement new technologies (UK 58%, FR 68%, DE 67%) and are more likely trust their gut when making decisions (UK 55% ‚FR 41%, DE 38% )

Areas identified as most critical in the future, such as IoT and mobile marketing, are also the areas where performance is weakest

Marketers worry about their company’s ability to keep up (51%)5, as resources and lack of training in new skills are barriers to success

]]>Fol­low­ing on from Mark Zablan’s blog post the Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015. The team has put together an info­graphic to summarise some of the key high­lights of the report relating to Digital Transformation, the central theme of this year’s Adobe Summit. But of course it’s still worth read­ing the report. You can read the Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015 here.

If you haven’t read the report, Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015, pro­duced with the support of Edelman Berland, it exam­ines the key topics facing Marketers in 2015. In the report, we sur­veyed 1,311 mar­keters across the UK, Ger­many and France.

]]>Changes—whether they be environmental, emotional, behavioral, etc.—have been a source of dramatic uncertainty since the beginning of time. Debris on the motorway affecting your morning drive? Air turbulence changing the comfort of your recent business trip? Your mother in law’s presence changing the dynamic in your household? The frustrating roadblocks that too often crop up in life can almost always be pinpointed on some element of change.

And so too for marketers, as I’m out every day speaking to top brands across Europe, the resounding theme I hear time and again is how businesses will be able to adapt to and succeed amidst change. New and evolving technologies are too often to blame for the digital roadblocks facing European marketers today—and as the leader in digital marketing technology—Adobe has once again taken the pulse of marketers across Europe to better understand how they are being impacted by these dramatic changes.

In the Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015, we surveyed 1,311 marketers across the UK, Germany and France—with top insights emerging around:

Marketers are seeing their industry transforming at a rapid pace – the face of marketing is changing

Roughly 5 in 6 marketers (86%) feel the pace of change is accelerating and over half (58%) believe marketing has changed more in the past year than in the previous 5 years.

7 in 10 marketers believe marketing is entirely different today than when they started their marketing career and that digital tools and proliferation of channels are fundamentally changing the nature of marketing.

The reaction to these changes is overwhelmingly positive

Seventy-two percent agree they are at the start of a golden age of marketing and most see this is an opportunity rather than a threat (87%).

Marketers describe feeling challenged (56%) and optimistic (55%).

Marketing’s business influence and impact is seen as increasing

Seventy-three percent believe the marketing function has increased in influence in the past 5 years and marketing is seen to strongly influence overall business strategy (65%).

Marketers are open to implementing technology (64%), and taking risks (57%) – however there is reluctance around adopting technology that is not yet mainstream.

Change is imperative. Marketers expect to adapt to tech advancements to keep pace with the industry (74%).

Although these changes are welcome and many feel optimistic, there is still concern around both their companies and their own abilities to meet these changes

66% say their company is somewhat to very well set up to deal with changes – of those only 10% say it is set up very well to do so.

Being tech-savvy – an early adopter of technology – is seen as key for an ideal successful marketer (57%), yet only 30% describe themselves in these terms.

Marketers see their companies as performing well on traditional marketing activities, but they are underperforming on activities marketers identify as most critical in the years to come, (big data, IoT, endemic marketing, and mobile marketing). These areas are also among those found to be most challenging for marketers.

I think we can all relate to these themes and, at Adobe, our job is to help knock down the digital roadblocks of today—partnering with you to build a digital roadmap to help you capitalize on marketing’s golden age. Check out the full report below for more information, and let’s continue this conversation as we combat digital change.